A body of self-financed technical institutes today rooted for a uniform fee structure, common entrance test, an improved staff-student ratio and service tax exemption for all the technical institutes in the country.

"With the Prime Minister aiming to make India a superpower, it is high time we shifted our focus to the educational institutes. The high fees and the tax burden should not fall on the students and institutes," R S Munirathinam, chief patron, All India Federation of Self-Financing Technical Institutions (AIFSFTI), told PTI.

"We urge the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the Centre to ensure a 1:25 teacher-students ratio as recommended by the M K Kauv Committee. The ratio is currently 1:15. They should also ask all the universities -- deemed, private and state -- to follow the AICTE guidelines, 2010," he said.

The federation, comprising around 10,000 colleges across the country, also batted for a uniform fee structure and syllabus for engineering colleges.

"We request the government to implement a uniform fee structure as recommended by the Krishna Committee to provide quality education," Munirathinam said.

Anshu Kataria, president, AIFSFTI, called for launching banking services exclusively for students and educational institutes.

"We also urge the Finance Minister to reduce the interest rate below 10 per cent and restructure the bank loans obtained by the educational institutions for infrastructure development in view of their inability to repay them due to poor admissions," he said.

On being asked about a latest AICTE report stating that more than 60 per cent of the eight lakh engineers in the country remained unemployed, Kataria said there was a spike in the number of engineering graduates, but not much improvement in infrastructure and quality education.

"Our infrastructure remains the same while the number of graduates keeps rising every year. We need to upgrade the facilities to match this surge and provide them with better opportunities," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)